


Wishes and Wishers

by Project0506



Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [13]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 19:54:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,050
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26613283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506
Summary: They grow comfortable.  A slightly saucy side to 'Wishes and Prayers and a Limerick or Two'.
Relationships: Boil/Longshot (Star Wars)
Series: Soft Wars Saucy Sides [13]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1701715
Comments: 10
Kudos: 104





	Wishes and Wishers

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Wishes and Prayers and a Limerick or Two](https://archiveofourown.org/works/24145075) by [Project0506](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Project0506/pseuds/Project0506). 



Barlex is bigger than life and louder too, and he gets just the smallest sliver of worse the more they drink. Innuendo flies faster, tales get taller. Boil’s more than happy that General Kenobi’s down at the other end of the table, keeping his cadet squadmate’s attention and firing back at him as easily. It frees Boil up for nicer things.

That sweet kid Longshot is slowly leaning pretty on his right, that perfect blend of solid and soft that revs Boil right up fast as anything. Waxer’s cheeky ‘see you in the morning’ might end up being particularly prophetic.

There’s no _real_ reason for Longshot to turn, bury a laugh up in his own shoulder so that it knocks up against Boil’s, but Boil’s not at all complaining. Hm, not at all. Boil sinks back in the plastinyl booth, and the shifting has Longshot slide just a quarter inch closer.

His hair’s just long enough to reach past his shoulders when he’s got it down, brown showing some near-red in streaks curled around his ears and the back of his neck. Boil’s thinking Longshot might have half a mind to let him wind those curls between his fingers, if he’s reading the tilt of his head and the narrowing of his eyes right.

“I actually saw you drink this,” Longshot mutters and stares at his cup, betrayed, “but I’m still not convinced it’s not drain cleaner.” He slides that last hair’s width to touching and settles easy against Boil’s side like a perfect fit.

Boil feels a laugh threatening deep in his stomach. “Hold it in your mouth,” he murmurs back, “roll it around a little until you get used to the taste.”

No, that wasn’t subtle. It wasn’t meant to be.

Longshot tries for a chastising look but it can’t hold past the way his lips keep quirking up to the left. He takes a drink, pointedly rolls it around in his mouth. It goes down smoother, just like Boil said.

He leans, presses his words behind Longshot’s ear like a secret. Discovers to his delight a nearly invisible tattoo of gold leafy vines curling just there. “Just takes practice,” he breathes against it and this time Longshot’s sputter is from laughter.

There are eyes on him; it’s a sensation he’s more than attuned to as a Scout and it’s just distracting enough that he almost misses the roll of a palm Longshot leaves so casually on his knee.

The General’s got a right good blush, Boil notes. He’s pale enough, must show every damn thing. Bet the Commander finds that fun.

“Something up sir?”

It’s almost as though he hadn’t noticed Boil watching him back. General Kenobi twitches, and his flush darkens all the way down his neck. “No, no Lt. Ah, I didn’t mean to be rude.”

“You’re in the cluster, General,” Barlax chimes in before Boil can. “Anything that happens in the cluster is fair game for anyone else in the cluster to _mock viciously_.” He turns a playful sneer Longshot’s way. “Even terrible choices made in real bad taste.”

“The LT’s highly recommended,” Longshot fires back and Boil rolls a laugh at his cheek. That’s his tell with drink, he knows. The whole damn universe gets karking hilarious.

“Waxer lies, vod,” Barlex lies somberly.

Boil sputters. “Now _hold on_ -”

“Exaggerates. _Inflates_.”

_ "Copaani mirshmure'cye, vod?" _ 1

“Heh. I’d be worried if I didn’t think you left your marbles in your other codpiece.”

Such a malicious attack could never be left unanswered: Boil and Barlex thump and smack like the cadets they’re not and threaten their drinks in the meanwhile. Kark, it’s really has been too long. Long enough that Gearshift watches them in no little wonder, his face incandescent with realizing his commanders are still men, vode.

Barlex lands solid at a nerve in Boil’s arm. He takes the hit to cover snatching his batcher’s cup. Winner Boil, in the grand scheme of it. Barlex grins that one that means payback.

Humor rings the table, but there’s something. A non-reaction, under the reaction, sort of thing he’s been trained all his life to pick up. The General takes a drink and Boil tries to pick through where that might have sparked.

“Sir?” It doesn’t feel right to leave it as is, somehow.

The General shrugs and it should seem common, shouldn’t slide as Jedi-smooth as it does, him slanted back across the stretch of the booth. At some point when Boil wasn’t looking he’s slipped to relaxed from pretending. Boil hadn’t noticed the feign until it had vanished. “It really isn’t anything of concern, Boil,” he promises and he’s genuine, Boil knows how to suss that out, how to roll words in his gut until they separate truth from trash. But Boil was also stewed on the Curious side of the tube, right under the pipe that bubbled in Obstinate.

Trapper’s eyeing them odd over his drying shell, face says he knows something’s up and can’t decide if he should mock or stay silent long enough to hear something blackmailable. Wooley’s leaning bored: eyes distant, fingers tapping absently on the formaplast. Innocent, he screams with every pore, certainly not mentally recording every word, no-sir.

If the General notices, and Boil can’t imagine he doesn’t, his tells are even less present. Sabacc, Boil thinks, sometime. Get the General and some Scouts on side, clean house.

“He’ll wait you out General,” Barlex warns and for a moment Boil let’s his stoic break, rolls his eyes. Force sake, Infantry, read the karking mood. “What?” Boil’s batcher snaps. “Am I just supposed to sit here while you Scouts incline eyebrows and sip drinks at one another? Use your karking words.”

Yeah, thinks, he’ll take the General along to hustle cards. Barlex can stay aboard and narrate the blindingly obvious.

“This about Waxer?”

Longshot isn’t a Scout. Could’ve been, easy: he’s got some of the best eyes in the GAR and his shot isn’t too bad either. Maybe his day job isn’t reading history in the fall of a stone or the edges of tread-print, but he thinks he’s seen what Boil can’t quite mine up from the twist of the General’s neck. He tilts his chin in answer and that there’s got a tiny thread of polite defiance that’s easy enough to read.

“Because I asked sir. I made sure they didn’t have some sort of exclusive partnership, first. I wouldn’t have just assumed.”

‘See you in the morning,’ Waxer had said, and chivvied Boil right out of their room when he’d wavered. Longshot slips a couple of knuckles up and down his inseam, wandering a little further up each pass. Boil couldn’t have kept his knees from falling wide if he tried.

When the General smiles it’s a little knowing and a whole lot soft.

He’s a good one, their General. There’s not a vod in Ghost who’d say different.

“You are a man of utmost integrity, Longshot.” He takes words that could be trite or condescending and he makes them genuine and whole. He takes what could be the first edges of accusation and folds it back into something warm. “I would have never doubted that, believe me.” General Kenobi huffs near silent and motionless. He slowly rotates his flimsi cup in his hands. “And regardless, I’m hardly one to insert myself into someone’s… relationship.”

He tastes the word like he isn’t sure of it, as though he feels the edges of where it doesn’t quite fit.

Boil and Waxer are partners. Lovers, some like that word. Waxer likes ‘romantic’, because Force never made a thing as karking romantic as Waxer when he gets going. If there’s a word for what is curling between him and Longshot, who leans in to the thumb Boil sweeps low on his back, well. No one’s ever told Boil. Hasn’t ever needed one, really. Seems like too much of a hassle, having to find names for every wind that blows.

“But you have concerns?” Longshot presses.

The Commander and the General can say it all they want, that the Jedi refuse to own the men, refuse to lay claim to their minds. But vode were raised knowing they were made for the Jedi. Sometimes, you can’t stop that little whisper that’s desperate to know you’ve been good enough for them. Sometimes, when your guard is lower than the drink, that little whisper leaks out.

“No, no! Not at all. If I have given you any impression of such I do apologize. No it’s…”

There’s worlds not spoken in the look the General slips between them, on the hand Boil’s curling around Longshot’s waist and the elbow Longshot’s resting on his hip. There’s history in that smile.

“I wouldn’t have said anything, you know,” he muses at least somewhat to himself. “Far too easy to ruin the mood, as it were. But I can’t let you think I have anything but respect for you. All of you. But. Boil, I’ve known there is something between you and Waxer, considering you check in with each other nearly before reporting to command after engagements. You’ve hardly been subtle.”

“Waxer’s worse,” Boil protests almost automatically. Barlex snickers and don’t think Boil isn’t making notes of which of his Scouts do the same.

The General doesn’t, though they can all tell it’s only barely. “Well then, I suppose for a given definition of worse…”

This time even Longshot snickers, and it would be betrayal if it didn’t rumble pretty down Boil’s sides. The General ducks his head and a full beard hides a lot, doesn’t it? Boil wonders if he could make that work for him.

“But outside of Waxer’s clearly un-reciprocated public worry … I have not had the privilege of seeing any of you gentlemen like this before.”

Boil likes sex. He likes that skin-warm blooming of a flirtation. He likes the bold ones, that sidle up to him and read the invitation he gives to slide fingers up his thighs, that bite a lip when he slides fingers just under the edge of their uppers. He likes the ones that smirk and beckon, that like the same push-pull give-take he does.

Boil is a professional. He would hardly flirt on-duty. And when else would the General have ever seen him?

“So if it isn’t too awkward, I would like to thank you for letting me see you like this. Like you.”

Like men.

Like a man with a near lap-full of gorgeous. Like men slowly working their blood up hot, because Longshot’s flush isn’t just from the rotgut, because Barlex always likes to find company to share the last few drinks with, because if Trapper spends the night alone after his shiny new paint it’ll only be because he wants to.

Like men. Not soldiers.

“There’s only rank on duty,” Wooley quotes, and it’s something Waxer’s always tried to ingrain. He’ll be real pleased to know it made it all the way to the General, that it swept fond agreement from him.

“Indeed,” their General says and it could be the drink or the Force but Boil would swear he feels the wash of a quiet sort of thrilled.

“That mean you interested?”

“I’ve never met him,” Boil decides, announces to anyone who’d care. Boil disowns all batchers forever, especially ones that will _not_ read the _karking mood_. “Honest, General, never seen this vod a day in my life.”

“Oi, you won’t know if you don’t ask.”

Boil’s gonna flush him out the next airlock, remove the stain from their line.

“Really Sgt, is _that_ your best material? I thought I was supposedly classy.”

Longshot’s pressing mortified laughter deep into Boil’s neck and he’s not real far from doing something about that. Lashes fine as spidersilk brush against his cheek. Eyes gone honey-gold in the lamp glow smile with promise.

No, Boil thinks. Not far at all.

When Boil slips from the seat, a long stretch of sniper under one arm, they barely pause from heckling Barlex to throw some his way. Boil’s going to have to make a memo to talk to the General, later. Compare notes. Man has an _approach_ , it sounds like, and who would have guessed it?

Later, much later. The door closes behind them and Longshot’s tired of waiting.

**Author's Note:**

> 1\. Are you looking for a smack in the face, mate. Back  
> 


End file.
